Blogs, social networks, e-commerce site, API ... You will have understood with php programming, php developer are able to develop all kinds of website, besides we will talk about web application to the extent that they expose often hundreds of features.
Static and dynamic sites
We consider that there are two types of websites: static sites and dynamic sites.
• Static sites: these are sites made only using HTML and CSS languages. They work very well but their content can not be updated automatically: the owner of the site (the webmaster) must modify the source code to add new features. It is not very practical when you have to update your site several times in the same day! The static sites are therefore well suited to make "showcase" sites, to present for example his company, without going further. This type of site is becoming increasingly rare today, because as soon as we add an interaction element (such as a contact form), we no longer speak static site but dynamic site.
• Dynamic sites: more complex, they use other languages, in addition to HTML and CSS, such as PHP and MySQL. The content of these websites is called "dynamic" because it can change without the intervention of the webmaster! Most of the websites you visit today, including OpenClassrooms, are dynamic sites. The only prerequisite to learn how to create this type of site is to make static sites in HTML and CSS.
For a dynamic site: add PHP
Whatever web site you want to create, HTML and CSS are essential. However, they are not enough to realize dynamic sites. You have to supplement them with other languages. This is exactly the purpose of this book: you will learn to manipulate PHP to create a dynamic website.
PHP is a programming language used on many servers to make decisions. It is PHP that decides which HTML code will be generated and sent to the client each time. The PHP language has been designed to create "live" sites (we are talking about dynamic sites).